Our Mandate

Mandate of the Health Care Professionals Against Electroshock Speakers Bureau

Formed in 2011, the “Health Care Professionals Against Electroshock” Speakers Bureau is a diverse group of informed and concerned health care professionals—psychotherapists, nurses, doctors, psychologists, counselors, and social workers, a number of us also academics. What unites us is an ethics of care and responsibility—an ethics which is at the base of our professional calling and which places us in opposition to the continued use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). As health care practitioners, we accept the underlying obligation which was embedded in the Hippocratic Oath over two thousand years ago—the obligation to do no harm. We go on record as stating that to varying degrees, ECT always harms, generally substantially, with most harm sustained by women and the elderly, moreover that it does so in all its forms, whether it be modified or unmodified, bilateral or unilateral, sine wave current or pulsed current.

While we are aware that some psychiatrists may simply be lacking the requisite knowledge, we go on record as stating that mainstream psychiatry has flagrantly and persistently misrepresented both this procedure and the vast body of research surrounding it. As an organization, we are committed to raising consciousness about the nature and effects of this treatment and see education as our mandate. We accept speaking engagements and interviews. We stand in solidarity with both survivors and colleagues who have had the courage to speak out over the years, despite very formidable pressures to keep silent. We call upon government to minimally withdraw its support for this procedure. Correspondingly, we are committed to a kinder and more egalitarian society where difference is not only tolerated but welcomed and where brain-damaging approaches to human suffering such as ECT have been relegated to the dustbin of history.